sentence if you have 500 grams of powder. there's something i'm with that picture because crack is used by the inner-city blacks and the potters used by suburban white more likely. but she's got such a prosperity and how the impact is that that's one of the reasons why the war on drugs has been conceived and implemented, executed. it is that this abortion i that black people. as a button issue in terms of black people get longer sentences than a white person. basically there is a great disparity and it's tough enough in this economy to get a job. but if you're a black or saint andrew of a criminal record, your chance of getting a job is almost done. and that means they're going to be confined to a ghetto, whether economic ghetto for a physical one is such. are never going to get out of there and you're going to be surveyed by the police, that you're more likely to come back

into the prison system because you're going to try to detract on the because you have no hope, et cetera, et cetera. so we want to raise the issue, look at our criminal justice system. we had eric holder who came to pick up the conference, justice breyer who came and talked about mandatory sentencing, et cetera. we hope the two of us can contribute to raising the level of awareness and to raise the debate level to the point where we can make a difference. >> host: thank you. >> guest: i want to add to what bill has such your question. can mr. obama -- president obama talk about race and racism. and it's almost like none of us have color can talk about race or racism. one, as john mitchum as news magazine said on "meet the press," white people get queasy and let people talk about race or racism. >> host: why, janet? why despite all the changes on

the progress that we've made that we still speak the issue of race under the table in some dark corner, not to talk about it. >> guest: i think it's shame. i think we really know our history and how unfair it's been. the white unearned advantage, the twin evils of white supremacy and black inferiority and you realize that these are not only evils, but lies, when he checked the history to see that the enslavement of black people with the economic engine that built this country. how proud would she be if your way to realize all of the advantages you have with the disadvantage of other people. they made us a legal and subhuman in order to justify their christian notions. presidents from our very first president, even abraham lincoln, our great emancipator had negative views on black people.

he wasn't setting the union for the south for our liberation. he was starting to hold his union together. and we got free in the process. so you know, i think when white look at that, if they look at it so much they history has been revised, changed, screwed. but when they look at the truth of the truth there's a hebrew word called on that, means truth. the truth is hard to take and some people can't take it. >> host: those of us who come from sort of a biblical background, religious heritage, we always see the truth will set you free. just out and it will. and he told the truth when you cross that bridge and thatcher had cracked. dr. king told the truth when he spoke in 1963, when he marched. we told the truth. some of us can't handle the truth. who was that?

>> host: that are implied in that movie. just do we want to tell the truth with love because we're all in it together. i'm as red, white and blue as all of us and i love this country. it's not only black or white, orientation, gender, religion, we divide ourselves to make ourselves vulnerable. i think these kind of divisive behaviors are affecting our national security. would not fight conventional wars really anymore. an enemy can see our weaknesses and our vulnerabilities to see where we are divided and conquer us. >> host: i think the conclusion of this unbelievable conference that you had really stated and has a rare defiance of what people say about them. we're really one family. we are one people.

just tell you set in the conference, given the way, make travel. >> host: good trouble, necessary trouble. and we all still to -- you know, people discussing today you hear those from time to time. why should you talk about race? you elected a black president, we live in a post-racial society. let's just move on. what do you say to that? >> guest: i think many people look at this and say what are you going back into history? we've come such a long wait and just by the way there is a black man in the white house. that is true except their millions of people who are living life in quiet desperation. i was struck recently with the story of went pittsburgher was walking down the street. suddenly a car pulls up in three white men jump out and start

running after him and he starts to run. while they catch him, i think the teaser to them. they him and the rationale was he didn't stop because we were police not in uniform under cover. and he didn't hear them, but the 50th and threatening object in the sand. it was a spray bottle, some kind of a soda pop. and this goes on and on and on. you can incite case after case of how many black men have been shot unarmed, one point he was out to show the dedication. others coming from other circumstances. but this is something that is still very ill and we have to come to grips with it. janet has a play and we have some really talented actors who are playing the role of anne frank and detail. and yet these young, black actors were out during rehearsal. and i find myself cautioning them. he may wear a sweatshirt and baggy pants. and i say we leave tonight,

don't run. don't run to the car. and it's almost a parental fear on my part to say be careful because you can still be seen as being a threat, even though you're just walking down the street. if you happen to be black and be dressed in a search voyeur automatically suspect you so it continues. but we have to do is educate ourselves and say yes, very stereotypes that we have about black people only have to break down the stereotypes. we need to look at people as people and not assume because they happen to be a certain color or religion. in the religion part comes in with anonymity because of anne frank. there is a rise of anti-semitism in commonplace here in this country globally but here as well. so it's all about teaching what to do is speak at against it in whatever form. if it's about color, repligen, as this city, preference, we ought to be speaking out against the family got people as people

and say we're all this together and we have to try to reach higher levels of goodness and decency and humane deed. >> host: you know dr. king said on one occasion, maybe several occasions that hate is too heavy a burden to bear. do you see is coming to that point in our country? that someday will be able to lay down the burden of hate and maybe just maybe america would emerge as the model for the rest of the world? >> guest: janitors and franco always believes in the goodness of people. it's never going to stop. cheesy optimism on the pessimist. >> guest: i've seen it and i'm living the train. so i don't know. i think a lot of it is genetic caretaking gets ingrained in us as human beings. >> host: so you think it's part of our dna? >> guest: i think we have to manage it.

i think as superior in my 10 d. and then we have to manage that. and there's a wonderful keeper sand that is to repair the world, to finish cuts work. he didn't make us perfect, so our job is to do the best we can to get to it. >> host: to the two of you see it is your calling, your mission or are you just feeling the sense of this is the thing to do, you must do it now. go back to dr. king. used to say the time is always right to do right. >> guest: is always ready. is it my calling? it is like reading in and breathing out. it's the right thing to do. it's to stand up for what is right. i hate the leaf, each ingested and certainly coming from my background i feeling of obligation, it's their responsibility. and in many ways i have

overcome. so if i get there, if i come from the bottom as a single parent living on the government and america and it gets here and be interviewed by you share this great city i have a responsibility to give back, to share, to lift a summit to take the risk. i haven't taken near the risks he took. he took risks of your life. you put your life and principles on line. i'm just talking and hoping to lock it. i'm proud of my husband for what he's doing. he was ready before you got to me, he was already involved in righteousness of the civil rights movement, but i am so proud of him and needs more men like him. we need white people to talk about it. because as you said earlier, every time you talk about injustice is the there they go again and their eyes glaze over. but when bands like my husband, bill cohen, black man, david shoe in, when they speak out,

our rabbi when he speaks out they listen, they pay attention. so i'm so grateful for him and his commitment. >> host: bill came from a great background and knowing him over the years and reading about tim, knowing where he grew up in knots all one thing i'm struck about you, the date that you are boring. august 28. you know, to me sometimes i think about that date and what happened on that date years later after you were born, the marshall washington, 63. and maybe like a bird and, something i call the spirit of history at certain dates and times and places sort of check it out. so maybe just maybe those forces attracted the two of you down at this time.

>> guest: i think it was totally coincidental that we met. >> guest: it's a sign. i i believe in not. >> guest: it was accidentally ran into each other. >> host: tell me about it. gusto i was deeply involved in the future resolution where the connection had to get back to me and i said we'll stop in boston it's got a great show and a very popular program. he should be interviewed and that the people about what you're doing. and it was not going to go that day because i was suffering from a terrible head cold and i was just getting worn down with all the pressures involved. but i went and i got to boston, went to the studio and they are when i was getting a drink of water employment as before going on the air, she walks by and that's when we first met. so her first image of me was not exactly graceful moment in my life. >> guest: it was a beautiful moment.

just go so the flight and tried spark started to fly in and saw how talented she was and what a great interviewer she was at that point. i became very attracted to her. gusto those working on the judiciary committee and the house on the impeachment of richard nixon and you're just on the cover of "time" magazine and andy young, our mutual friend andy young who was sitting within the congress had told me about the coming through doing good because the kind of show i did with the talkshow and they wouldn't let me, a plumbing, to the series sensitive interviews. sweeney said tattoo bill calling on his way through tuning. health i.t. tell them i knew what's going on. and i looked at bill and i said cohen, i later learned that his mother was irish and his father is jewish. >> host: which makes a somewhat unusual for me because that that combination had the

quintessential jewish name, then the other having been irish and not converted me from a jewish. but i was raised an hour to six years of hebrew school. but i was not really ever considered jewish and really kind of sense to me to what other people were discriminated against. because to the gentiles i was jewish, to the jewish people as a gentile and if it is neither category. so i was typing a character building experience for me and i figured maybe much worse sensitive to people who have to labor under the discriminatory practices and policies. but i want to get back to talk about janet's life because love is so to me inspiring about life is how she was able to overcome all that absolve discrimination that took a center homestay with the at its headquarters, to go from being the younger a living next to the day go by the way who played fastball outside, to

go and become a model to meet with dr. king and have him as her mentor. to meet mohammed al lee, who gave her a think one of the great constructive moments of her career. i'll let her talk about it for when she was parading around cramming queen and a parade in chicago, she saw her friend who was head of this title and he said maybe down at the end of the parade. alternate over to you. a >> guest: i don't know if we have enough time. it's an old story. >> host: share your story, it's important. just go i met dr. king and mohamed ali the same year, 1966 in chicago. mohamed was having great difficulty because the federal government had stripped and of this title as heavyweight of the world and because he didn't want to serve in vietnam. and i saw him at the end of this

curry that i was thin and i was sort of crying because he didn't have his entourage with them and he didn't look sad, but he was alone. and i said mohammed, they've taken everything from you. the government district of your likelihood, everything. they take them out good he said janik, they haven't taken everything from me. they haven't taken me for me. and he said i know you want to be something someday. never once have been so much that you want a bar that love yourself. so when they take it from you, they take you from you. and he was 24 years old giving me that with them. >> host: that's good advice. why do we pause for a break and we'll be right back.

>> host: left continue our dialogue, her discussion on the question raised reconciliation in america.

no one but no one can deny that fact. i know someone who grew up in alabama during the 40's and 50's as a young child with racial discrimination tasted the bitter fruits of racism and acted like it, but when people have saved nothing has changed day, bill, janet, i say come and walk in our shoes. and that cannot be denied. so where do we go from here? were to recover here to continue to build on that progress that permeates. but in order to vote on the progress that has been made, we have to continue to tell the story. >> guest: exactly. remember, to never forget. people often tell black people to get over it, that's history. a history moves in a spirit the legacy of our life now is that history. but i want to ask your question. you know my background is that

of a journalist and i want to ask your question because reliving history seem richer with us. you're celebrating 50 years, 45 years of crossing that bridge. where did you summon the courage to face those people with the dogs and the guns and the epitaph and all the things they were throwing at you, spitting on you throwing at you. where did you summon the courage? >> host: i don't think i was being courageous. i didn't like it. my folks, my mother, my grandparents, my great-grandparents had told us in a sense to be quiet, this is rental business. you get in trouble, don't get in the way. when i heard march the 13th time i heard his voice on the radio and i felt like he was speaking directly to me. and i got in the way. i've been getting in the way for more than 50 years good >> guest: were you scared? >> host: you get to the point

where you lose the sense of fear of something that is so good, so right and so necessary that you have to continue to push him and that's what i think we all have to do, continue to push, continue to build. >> guest: hubby reconciled with any of the white people that were calling you names since those days? >> host: i have an opportunity to meet some of the individuals not only that called me names and either have me arrested, in jail, but one of the people that beat a group of us on the freedom rights in may of 1961 to be exact as may 91961 and north carolina. after president barack obama was elected and inoculated, a man about my age came to washington to visit my house on capitol hill and said mr. lewis, i'm one of the people who attacked you

and capitol rock hill and i want to apologize. he said his son has been trying to convince them to do this for many years and finally he did it. so we embraced and we both cried. >> guest: knowing you john, you forgave him before he has to. >> host: tt's at this is all about. that's what this book is all about. "race & reconciliation in america." that should come to the point where you have the power to forgive and be reconciled and move on. >> guest: but don't you think in order to reconcile, the oppressor must come forward and knowledge the problem, what is done, the transgression. and in any case, apologize. but if they can't apologize, acknowledge what they've done before we can forgive?

>> host: it is important. that's why it's important for us to continue to talk, to dialogue. >> guest: are they to come back to something you mentioned, the magic update, august 28. that was a very important date in janet's career because she was about to enter an integrated high school. and brown freeboard of education have been cited to the sequel now and she was entitled to the equal education and yet she saw what happened to emmett till and most laypeople have no idea who he was, but he changed the course of american history. he was a young boy from chicago, went on mississippi to visit his grandparents and while he was there, he committed the crime of whistling at a white woman, for which she was taken out and brutally, brutally beaten, disfigured and lynched. his mother had the courage to bring his body back home and

have an open casket ceremony because she wanted the world to see what had happened to him and what they do to black people. and that changed janet's life in a very significant way because she decided after she saw that picture in jet magazine, she was not going to go to a white school. >> guest: i was all excited that summer after the nine wightman decided i was sequel to the white girls are the white kids. and i was all excited about going to an integrated school. i wanted to get to know them. i wanted what was perceived to be a better education. after we got word that summer that emmett till have been married i thought i was going to stay in the all-black environment and get as much as members of that was the kind of world i have to face. i saw something happen in our community and probably seven years, john. when we got word in indiana that and it happened murdered for whistling at a white woman in mississippi, eyewash grandmother hold my little brother closer. i washed away code of the eyes of our elders feared in the

resentments. and i can't tell you how proud we were when rosa parks, that following december sat down on the past. and it wasn't because her feet were hurting. she was thinking about what they did to emmett till. and of course you have a history better than i. that was the beginning of the dr. king movement. >> host: it was a turning point. >> guest: he didn't want to do it, dt? >> host: he was a very reluctant person, but he was callable. and sometimes they're callable. and i think the two of you have been callable to pull able and you're playing a well. >> guest: is wonderful, thank you. but it's wonderful that i get to play this role. but bill can't we do this together. the stories that we wear the design for this first conference. it's ironically black-and-white and it does raise some reconciliation and there's one that says the dream, you know, because we love dr. king so much

in his shin. and we give it away at the conference two of the participants so that they could remember and they could find this kind of unity, this endless ring that is circled. and it so ironic that bill and i would be doing this together because they took another u.s. supreme court decision to allow us to marry. but then our age of reason, we were adults in 1967 and it wasn't until 1967 that the supreme court decided that we could marry. i lied about my age. >> host: we had all these laws, especially in southern states that blacks and white to marry. could not stay in the same hotel, couldn't write in the same taxicab. and i think it so fitting to have this bracelet, black-and-white, the dream.

it is an effort to finish the word, to fulfill the drama dr. king. >> guest: people often say about us, like people have come a long way. and i say, we've always been capable of being doctors and lawyers and television personalities and congressmen and secretaries of the state and president. it is laypeople who have come along way. and because of it, america has traveled a great distance. and that is the distance that we celebrate with this bracelet. and the further distances what we're hoping for in our dialogues. >> guest: i want to come back to emmett because this is really important to the two of us. janet has written a play called in and it anne frank and it in a place called memory. and this is important because it deals with what we talk about race and reconciliation.

it deals with hatred, how he kills. and it's a matter of fact the play was supposed to have premiered hoping that the holocaust museum last year, last june. and while we were waiting for janet to arrive and i was talking on the phone with her, he car drove up an elderly man got out of that car. he watches the museum when i was about 30 feet away in a black security guard pulled open the door to help and am a man picked up a rifle and killed a security guard. and then the security guard, opens fire on him. at the irony was that on that day, in which a play that really talks about how he kills institutionalized feature in germany during the period of time and in this country with the clan and other groups who were terrorizing black people to talk about what has happened and what needs to happen, what call to action has to take lace to

have that interrupted by anand he was 88 years old carrying a bird and he talked about the patriot and killing an innocent young officer who had a young family, that really kind of captured by we are committed to talking about race and reconciliation. why were committed to taking this play and making sure that the young people understand what has happened in the past. who and what she symbolized to millions of people who wiped out by adolf hitler. i've emmett, who was just want boy who was brutally murdered, but that date place more than thousands have taken place. we want these two characters to be tied to the school systems to say everybody knows about anne frank. now many know about emmett till. but if you look at their license terms are totally different countries, different races, with the gents, backgrounds, they

both were treated the same way by the oppressors. just go the common knowledge of how they were treated here at jewish people would have to step up the sidewalk and could look at germany five. here in this country black person could look a white person in the iso could it have to step off the sidewalk. they have curfews for the jewish people and nazi europe gave the sun devils for us here in this country. we had to be back on the plantation, couldn't be in town after sundown. in regard to a movie theater, the jewish people and nazi your project is to sit with in the balcony. where do we sit in the crows nest? we got to say say way in the back. >> host: the crow's nest for the buzzard roost. just go the jewish people had to wear the star of david on the front and back of the close of the nazi could see them coming and going. we didn't have to bring the patches. pigmentation, skin color was enough to discern who we were. so if those parallels that i talk about in